Dr. Steven Novella (SGU) blog on the trial:
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org...th-of-toddler/
Back to the OP and point #2:
Therefore, how much blame does Canada have for licensing a profession of, essentially, fake medical providers? Governments that legitimize such professions are failing in their duty to their citizens in the same manner that the Stephans failed Ezekiel. Ezekiel’s death is therefore on the heads of the naturopathic profession and the Canadian government as well.
[There is also a much more diffuse blame, but still clear, on the entire alternative medicine community. The Stephans did not exist in a vacuum: they are a product of a cultural movement that seeks to legitimize what was considered health fraud just a generation ago. This is what happens when you abandon rigorous science as the basis of a medical standard of care, when you water down that scientific standard, try to subvert the proper functioning of medical science, and lobby for regulations that allow for pseudoscience and just plain bad science in medicine.
The Stephans are not an anomaly – they are a symptom of the intellectual bankruptcy and deception of the alternative medicine movement.
Governments have been slowly abandoning the defense of the standard of care, and in a way it is hypocritical of them to condemn parents for doing what they have implicitly sanctioned.]
Do our governments have to do more to regulate and inform about CAM?
There is a TV and radio ad often aired in Alberta by the Alberta Chiropractors. The main thrust of the ad is that the majority of Albertans have already been to a Chiropractor (this is the logical fallacy of appeal to popularity).
Why is there no rebuttal or requirement to defend the claims made?